


make me

by CopperCaravan



Series: Dragon Age Prompt Fills [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: (as in saarebas confinement), Dragon Age Quest: Demands of the Qun (Inquisition), Gen, Mention of Past Abuse, Qunari Culture and Customs, Tamin Adaar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:53:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6733189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt fill: Adaar + things you said through your teeth.<br/>Tamin Adaar saves the Chargers and she's not fucking sorry for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make me

**Author's Note:**

> Tamin's a mage; she's also Tal-Vashoth and a mom because I don't care about canon.

It should not be her decision. She made her own choice many years ago: everything to lose, everything to gain and it was hers to risk. But this—it doesn’t belong to her, none of it. She was saarebas, then she was Tamin. At every moment of her life, the line was clear.

But _he_ is Hissrad and The Iron Bull both, a luxury borne of the same philosophy that enslaved him yes, but a luxury nonetheless. He has never been saarebas, never been collared. Pity is hard to reach for. He should have known better: Qunari cannot be both.

But in this moment, he is neither. He is only a decision waiting to be made; this is as he has always been but this time, he gives his power not to the Qun, but to a Tal-Vashoth. He knows better now. He cannot be both.

“What are you waiting for? Sound the retreat. Do it _now._ ”

_Save them._ That is her first thought. _Save your people._

He’d looked at her like a lost child and only when he turns away to sound the horn does she realize that his people might not have been his people, that his people are his people no longer.

And then comes her second thought: her daughter.

Back at Skyhold, practicing her magic. (“You’re to stay with Madam Vivienne, Ilette, do you understand? I don’t want Dorian teaching you to reanimate cats or nugs or... whatever.”)

Sleeping alone in their bed, worrying over her mama. (“I’ll only be a week or so, kadan. You don’t need to worry. Mama will come back just like always.”)

Perched on a fence post, waiting for the Chargers. (“Sweetheart, you know I don’t mind you spending time in the yard but if you and Rocky get up to any more of this nonsense—just look at what you’ve done to the stables!”)

Her daughter. Vashoth, daughter of Tal-Vashoth. And saarebas, both of them.

Sometimes, when she looks at Bull, she can still feel the shackles heavy on her wrists and ankles, the way the metal pressed against the jutting bone and she could not ask for it to be loosened. Sometimes, when she sees him across the table, drinking and laughing, she is fifteen years old again and she is running, she is hiding in the back room of a tavern, she is cutting loose the tendon stitches in her lips and she is thinking that she will never go back, that she will die, that she will lend her body to a demon, that she will drown Par Vollen in the blood of every single Arvaarad before she will ever go back.

Her third thought, when Gatt is pacing back and forth in front of them, flinging accusations as the dreadnought explodes, is that Hissrad will not forgive her.

Saarebas. She and her daughter—they cannot be worth a dreadnought, not to Bull and not to the Qun. But even if they were, she knows it is a senseless fear; the Qunari do not barter over such matters and she has bigger, meaner things to haunt her dreams at night. The Qun will not have her. The Qun will not have her daughter. The Qun will not even have the Chargers.

Iron Bull will have to decide himself what _he_ will have. She has made enough decisions for him.


End file.
